Orlando, Florida – BT and Dolby are marking their third year at Enterprise Connect promoting BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice conferencing. This time around, Dolby showed off its Voice Conference Phone. The world has changed, and it hasn’t.

Pricing on the beautifully designed Dolby Voice Conference Phone wasn’t announced, but would be “comparable” to other conference phones (i.e. Polycom) on the market.

A demo for analysts and media highlighted the device’s ability to deliver both high quality audio via the Dolby-based conferencing service as well as a spatial (audio location-based) experience for participants sitting around the device in a conference room setting, as well as for remote users via PC or mobile soft clients.

BT discussed its initial traction and statistics in promoting the Dolby conferencing service, to which it has an exclusive. The telecommunications firm has secured 7 customers, is in active discussions with around 50 more. Executives said they were surprised that 50 percent of conference traffic to date was IP based, indicating some “peer pressure” within companies to get participants to use the service for its higher quality an/or opt-in by users to use the higher quality service over PSTN-based participation.

But it’s not just about quality. BT says initial MeetMe Dolby users are averaging 30 percent cost savings over PSTN-conferencing, and have the potential to save up between 20 percent to 50 percent, depending on usage.

One should also note BT will gain cost savings as well. The company can shut down legacy PSTN conferencing gear and consolidate on newer, more flexible IP and software based services.